


Last Dance

by Gossamer



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blood, Established Relationship, Halloween, Haunting, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 23:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gossamer/pseuds/Gossamer
Summary: Keith and Shiro share a dance on Halloween night.





	Last Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bananuh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananuh/gifts).

With Shiro's hand held lightly in his own, Keith led the way through the ancient stone hallways. They passed hand in hand down the moonlit corridor, the stars twinkling and watching the pair through each arched window. Somewhere in the distance, floors below them, they could hear the distant sound of music as the party went on. Throngs of strangers and their handful of friends in cheap Halloween costumes passing around the booze and candy, enjoying the allure of a real ancient castle behind the hotel's modern day amenities that had dug deep into its tourist attraction factor. 

Nobody noticed the two men sneaking away like lovers in the night. 

Keith led the way, navigating the twists and turns with ease. A hidden passage in a wall. A secret stairwell that nobody had taken in centuries. Shiro's smile was soft as he followed Keith's lead, their shoes leaving prints in the dust. Something tugged at Keith's heart as he looked upon Shiro's smile. The older man seemed caught in a dream; peaceful, at ease. 

Keith, on the other hand, felt like he was in a waking nightmare. Ugly tears had long since dried on his cheeks, his eyes wide and haunted as that guilt swelled up inside of him. Step after step up that stairwell, following another set of footprints left behind in the dust. Looking back over his shoulder, he smiled at Shiro. Smiled despite the terror in his eyes as the stairwell came to an end, leaving them with an ancient corridor, lined with cobwebs and lit by sconces upon the wall. 

"Not again." His voice was just a whisper, but those words echoed loudly inside his head. Desperation squeezing his soul tight as he led Shiro down towards that open doorway under a force that wasn't his own. "Not him." Keith tried to dig his feet in, but he had no control. Only his eyes showed his anguish as he tugged Shiro after him and through that doorway. 

Just a storage room that the world had forgotten. One piled high with brittle furniture, chests of secret treasures, broken old things that had been locked away and forgotten in a previous time. But the center of the room had been cleared, the dust already swept and stirred up by sweeping lines and footprints. A pattern that Keith knew well as Shiro suddenly tugged him close to his chest. Keith's stomach dropped; any other night and he would have loved it. But now, it only brought them closer to the inevitable. 

Shiro looked the very part of the dashing prince that he had chosen to dress up as. That jaunty cape settled stylishly over his shoulder, masking his missing arm. The leather boots. An embroidered with a stylish belt. He placed his one hand on Keith's waist, while another invisible force caught the younger man's other hand, and together they were swept up in the dance. Slow and romantic, Shiro leaning forward, pressing a soft kiss to Keith's hair. They spun together, and as the room revolved around them, Keith caught their own reflection in the mirror.

Except it flickered in and out of focus, trading one image for another. One moment it was only them and the next it was a man and a woman, embracing just as they were. Keith could feel the brush of fabric over his legs; the weight of the gown upon his body, though when he looked down at himself it was still only the store-bought buccaneer. She was dressed in fine silks, though the feet that dusted the floor with each movement were tattered slippers. Her long dark hair flowing down her back as her beloved spun her about to music that Keith could not hear. 

In Shiro's place was a man just as tall, just as broad-shouldered, but with two good arms mimicking the ghostly touch that Keith could feel upon his own hand -- an Earl of a time long since passed, dressed in all the finery of his station, his painting still hung in the grand stairwell of the castle. 

Keith counted down the beats as he stumbled through the last steps, fighting the exhaustion, and the inevitability. One last turn. A soft smile on Shiro's face. The way his arm wrapped around Keith as their dance shifted into swaying. He tipped his head down, and Keith felt a spectral touch over his cheek as they played out this ancient story. 

The kiss felt wrong, and yet Keith's hands slid beneath Shiro's arms, pressed into his back. Passionate and cold all at once -- a mockery of something they had shared time and again. 

They parted, Shiro whispering something in his ear. A vow. A promise. Keith rested his chin on Shiro's shoulder and found the woman's dark eyes peering over her own lover's shoulder staring back at him from the mirror. Wide. Desperate as her fingers dug into the man's back, clinging just as hard as Keith was. 

Keith slowly drew his hand back, watching as the woman in the mirror did the same. The shadows grew dark around them, stretching ominously up the wall behind them. Candles flickered in a breeze that Keith could not feel. His hands were clammy, lips pressed tightly together as he felt a sob bubbling up. 

His fingers closed tight around something solid and pressed the sharp point of the blade with ease into Shiro's heart. 

Together they collapsed to the ground, the knife tumbling away as Keith caught Shiro in his arms. The man's weight bore them both to the ground. Keith curled over Shiro, hands pressed frantically over the wound, slick with blood as it poured out, his life spilling out all over his shirt. 

"Shiro, no. Stay with me. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." But his words were soon drowned out by ghostly wails that seemed to come from every direction at once. They pierced Keith's heart and he hugged Shiro close, the man too cold and still in his arms. Such terrible despair born of darkness wrapped around them. 

_ The dark-eyes woman kicked and screamed as she was dragged away; her fine silks in tatters now. Her hair tangled and dirty. Her shoes had been lost, leaving her bare-foot and bleeding as they dragged her to the pyre. "It wasn't me! It wasn't me! I'm not a witch! He loved me! I swear it, he loved me!" _

The vision shattered and Keith was left standing alone in a brightly lit hallway, staring up at the painting of the Earl of Castle Windamere. 

Another piece of his soul had frayed away. 

He dropped his gaze down to find hands free of blood, and felt the pull of the puppeteer's strings as he turned to find Shiro there, warm and whole with that smile on his face. As he passed the darkened window, the only reflection it showed was the shape of a man right out of the pages of history. 

The tragedy of the Earl of Castle Windamere and his secret lover began again, with Keith and Shiro playing the leading roles. 

And while Shiro walked in a dream, for Keith it had never been anything but a waking nightmare. Step by step, with Shiro's one hand in his own, he led them through the corridors of the castle. His stomach felt right, bile rising up in his throat as he smelled the acrid smell of flesh burning. 

The trip that had at first been planned as an escape for all of them -- but a desperate intervention from his friends to try and get Keith to _ let go _ of their own tragedy. But the ghost of Castle Windamere had found a kindred spirit in Keith instead. Again, he led Shiro to pain and suffering. Again, the man walked unknowingly at his side. Keith squeezed his eyes shut, that invincible force guiding them effortlessly, the man wrapped in that suffocating agony. 

_ Keith calling Shiro's name, his voice hoarse from coughing and choking on smoke _ . _ And Shiro groaned, struggling to hide his own agony. But Keith could see it there, amidst the raging fire. How could Shiro not suffer with his arm mangled and pinned beneath the collapsed debris of the burning room. Rubble that would have buried Keith, if Shiro hadn't shoved him out of the way. _

_ Shiro's arm for Keith's life. It wasn't right. _

None of this was right. 

Every step was a different kind of agony, Keith drowning in a grief mirrored in the heart of another. Together, man and woman alike followed the path to their inevitable doom, dragging their loved one with them. She was a mystery and a fairy tale -- one recorded in no official records, but was still the favorite ghost story of the staff of the Castle.

And it was Keith and Shiro, still young lovers themselves, that she told her story through.

The bags were deep under his eyes now, exhaustion pulling on him even as he went through the motions. Dancing until he was dizzy with it. Sliding the blade in, his hand ignoring all of that desperate, silent urging to drop that deadly weapon. Sobbing over Shiro until it all began again.

"Not him," he begged the spirit. "Please, not him." The woman echoed that same plea back at him, sobbing and broken, trapped in that same curse. Each cry cut through him as surely as that blade cut into Shiro. 

How many times had they lived that story now?

The secret passage opened to them. Again.

They passed into the abandoned corridor, its spectral lights flickering to life. Again.

Keith knew every step of this dance. He knew that frightened look of the woman in the mirror, suffering her own agony. He knew the horrifying sensation of a blade sliding into vulnerable flesh.

His fingers curled around the handle of that blade as it appeared out of nothing in his hand, pressed gently to Shiro's chest. Not again. _ Not again_. 

Keith squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the woman's aching heart, naked and vulnerable through her eyes in the mirror. Instead, he saw Shiro lying there, bleeding or burning, his life stolen away by a man who had been foolish to think he could ever be right for Shiro. A man who could never, ever do enough to repay Shiro for all his love had given him. When Shiro still had _ so much _ he could do for the world. 

With his heart breaking apart, his hands shook for the first time beneath that ghostly influence. His hand moved, the blade piercing a fractured heart. Keith's breath flowed out of him, gasping as he staggered away from Shiro. And he turned his gaze down, stunned, to find the first change in the story. 

Keith shuddered, eyes wide as he found Shiro staring back at him. Truly seeing him for the first time since they had lost themselves. 

For the first time that evening, Keith felt the puppeteer's strings snap, and he crumpled to the ground like a rag doll. 

"Keith! Keith!" Shiro was right there at his side, the man struggling to settle Keith on his back with his one arm. His fingers hovered over the dagger still buried in Keith's chest as the younger man gasped for breath, lips working, but he couldn't find the words. Shiro clutched at his shaking hand, pushing himself up onto his knees, frantically searching the room for something, someone, anything that could help. 

Tears shimmered in Shiro's eyes as he started rising to his feet. But Keith only tightened his grip on Shiro's hand. 

"Keith, I need to find help! You're gonna be fine. You're--" 

Keith gasped, coughing suddenly. His hand free hand pressed over his chest, clutching at his heart. "Shiro," he croaked out, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's okay. I'm...I'm okay." 

They both had to pause a moment and look. Really, really look. Shiro sucked in a steadying breath, brow furrowed as he slowly sank back down next to Keith. With care, he helped his boyfriend sit up, Keith tugging at the collar of his shirt. No blood stained the fabric, and no wound split the flesh underneath. 

And just like that, they both could breathe again. 

"Keith, what's going on? You were...There was so much blood." Shiro sat back on his heels, looking utterly lost up there in that secret storage room, still dressed for the Halloween party that had been derailed by spirits. Candles still flickered with flames and Keith shook his head slowly. 

"I'll tell you everything. But not here." No, he had seen more than enough of this room. But even as Keith struggled to his feet, leaning on Shiro for support, he found himself feeling lighter somehow. The shroud had lifted from his shoulders, that agonizing blanket of misery no longer suffocating him. He looked around the storage room and it was just a room. No more ominous shadows. Slowly, he turned to look at the mirror. 

But it was only Shiro and Keith, leaning on each other, Shiro looking concerned as he wrapped his arm around Keith's shoulders, giving him the comfort he craved in that moment. 

"Let's get out of here," he uttered in the candlelight. With one more wary look around them, the pair of them vanished back through the door, eager to join their friends. He didn't care how much Lance complained. They were out of here at the crack of dawn, and Keith was not looking back.

If he had, he might have seen the Earl and his lover dancing their spectral dance together in the candlelight. They danced without grief or sorrow, the dark-haired beauty resting her cheek on her lover's shoulder, with her first smile in centuries upon her lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This was written as part of the Haunded VLD Exchange 2019 as a gift for Bananuh! I actually have a whole lot of backstory written for this fic, but ended up only hinting at some of it to keep an air of mystery around it. 
> 
> I've been wanting to write something spooky for the season, and couldn't resist the idea of a bit of a haunting. Happy Halloween!


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